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Saturday, 20 May 2017

Less worthy than Fievel Goes West is this, the first of many, many sequels to The Land
Before Time. It suffers many of the same problems - less sense of
importance, less at stake and less sense of danger - but also has a much weaker
central premise.

That said, it establishes a fairly neat
formula that would hold strong over many sequels and essentially does the same
things that The Lion Guard would retread - rather more
expertly - decades later.

The plot follows the gang trying to be
all grown up by foiling nasty egg thieves, for some reason given British
accents by the actors behind Johnny Bravo and Pinky from Pinky and the
Brain. They not only manage to foil these inept antagonists but end up
hatching an egg. Not one of Ducky's siblings, as expected, but a Sharptooth! A
baby tyrannosaurus. So begins a middle act about learning not to act with
prejudice, even against a creature that will grow up to eat you without
hesitation, and an inevitable third act about returning the baby to its
vicious, voiceless parents.

Almost none of the original cast sticks
around, with only Cera of the main gang reprising her performance. I think this
is before the tragic death of Judith Barsi, who played Ducky in the first
movie, but her replacement does a decent job with the character's odd grammar.
Littlefoot sounds older, but that works for a sequel and I didn't find fault
with the main group.

But the rest of the film is just too
insubstantial. The egg thieves are bumbling idiots who pose little threat even
to juvenile dinosaurs, and there's never any question of little Chomper’s fate,
though I assume he'll be seen again in further sequels. In the original, poor
Littlefoot is put through such a wide range of emotions it's very easy to
empathise with him. In this sequel, there's just not enough to tug at the
heart-strings or make us care about the current predicament.

And that's what really gives the feel of
a TV series as opposed to a movie. It's the sense of scale and significance.
This movie would have been fine as three episodes of a TV show, but making a
feature film demands rather more. At least Fievel Goes West tries
to shake things up with a huge change of setting. This movie just continues
from the first film with very little sense of peril or excitement, and the
result, perhaps inevitably, is a film that just isn't very exciting.

Friday, 19 May 2017

An American Tail was
one of Don Bluth's best, restrained by a simple but coherent narrative and
centred on a very cute protagonist. So it makes sense that it got a
sequel.

However, as with other successful
franchises he kicked off, the second theatrical American Tail movie
- as with the TV series and direct-to-video follow-ups - had no involvement
from Don Bluth.

Fievel Goes West, while successful,
has the feel of contemporary Disney sequels. Unlike Pixar's follow-ups, these
tended to be rather cheaper and less impressive than their predecessors. So it
is with Fievel Goes West - while it has elements on the
premium side, like voice acting from John Cleese and the final performance from
James Stewart, as well as some ambitious action sequences, overall everything
is just shallower, less well-executed and less believable.

The original has a simple set-up with
plenty of grit and misery to balance the cuteness and light. The sequel is just
a bit too silly to carry the torch.

One significant positive is that
Fievel's character developed in a believable way. He's grown up a little since
the first movie, with more confidence and even headstrong selfishness. It
works, and aligns well with his burgeoning interest in cowboys.

Perhaps the most crucial problem is that
the sequel lacks a sense of danger. A spider doesn't seem like it should be a
threat to anyone, even a mouse. While Cleese's character is compelling and
believable, his ultimate plan is too stupid for any situation beyond a Saturday
morning cartoon. And in particular, Tiger's storyline is far-fetched, at times
racially insensitive and ultimately doesn't bring enough gravitas to a final
action scene - especially with little Fievel participating.

Overall, Fievel Goes West is
not a bad movie. It's perfectly watchable and better than other Bluth-movie
sequels, especially the execrable Timmy to the Rescue. But it
doesn't quite manage to escape that feeling that it's been thrown together by
writers who don't care for the material and only want to retread familiar old
story paths, takes the slapstick too far in a way the original didn't, and
doesn't give enough reason to care about its characters. Not a worthy sequel,
but not a dire one either.

Welcome to Adziu's small corner

Welcome to my little blog, here in this small corner.
Over the years I have seen a few hundred animated series and movies, and the purpose of this blog is to house my impressions. This is not intended to be a daily blog with impressions of each episode: I write my thoughts only after viewing something complete. Several have been imported from previous blogs dating back to 2005 - as well as drawing from journals from as early as 1999!
Now, please do sit, enjoy the fire, have a mug of something warm and put in a comment or two.